When is it good not to pick up a shard?
Never? Just like gold?
Let us auto pick up shards. I can’t believe this is a debate and it makes me question the future of the game.
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It was intentionally made to not auto-pickup, showcasing it like valuable loot.
Though it only leads to clutter and a bit of a hassle in the current implementation.
My suggestion would be for ‘normal’ shards to be auto-pickup like gold. Rare ones being displayed on the ground though, meaning finding one is still valuable and needs to be clicked individually, but otherwise simply enjoying the loot explosion of shards while reducing needless click.
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Maybe I’m just too old, but I really dislike when game does everything for me. I personally like to have to pay attention to not miss anything. The game already picks up gold for you, marks important items on the map and you pick all the shards by just picking up one.
I really think this is enough, but again, I am used to have to pay attention to not miss stuff in games and it may be… tedious to some? I don’t want to play a game that plays itself though.
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I don’t want a game that plays itself either. But, I do want the things that I do in the game to be meaningful.
Me deciding whether or not a rare is good? Meaningful. The decision can be either good or bad.
Me clicking on an item that should always be picked up? NOT meaningful.
Picking up shards is as meaningful as spinning around twice on the spot before looting would be. It’s a complete and utter waste of time.
Edit: I realize there is people who have been sorting oranges as a job for 40+ years and are happy. If this is who the game is for, so be it.
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I’m also hesitant for games doing too much for the player, but only when it circumvents the core gameplay. But what is the “game?” To me, an aRPG is about creating builds, finding loot and evaluating it, and running around killing monsters. It’s not about trying to click a bazillion tiny UI elements while I’m trying to kill monsters. A change like this makes it easier to enjoy the core gameplay rather than taking anything away from it.
I especially like the compromise of auto-looting common shards since you don’t really get excited about finding those but then needing to pick up the rare shards so you can see and get excited by when they drop.
I would certainly prefer to have autopickup/transfer for shards. But I do understand the devs point of view.
And there are many many times when I don’t bother picking up shards. When you have a few hundreds or more of all basic shards, you basically skip picking them up a lot of time, including on echo chest rewards. Lots of times I’ve opened the chest and it dropped shards but I didn’t even bother picking them up.
So yeah, I would prefer autopickup/transfer, but I can live with how it is for now.
It should also be noted that Mike has said before that they intend to rebalance shard drops, so that they drop less often but in larger numbers. And that they’re thinking of a way to convert shards into other shards, which would make even the common ones more valuable.
It’s never not god to pick up shards. You grab all of them anyway at once so who cares? To me it’s just something I do automaticly just because I’m so used to it. I don’t look what they are I just pick them up and stash them when my inventory is full because I don’t care at all what shards I picked up because that’s unimportant.
The important thing is to shtter/removal the important affixes from your gear so you have shards to roll them on good gear. Shards are in 95% of all cases just random trash you pickup because EHG treats them like they do.
Yes, the same here, absolutely!
But that only counts for anything which has an ‘impact’ on the outcome for me. Hence when it does combat moves for me or takes decisions of choosing what to pick up out of my hands.
The point though is that picking up shards generally has no purpose at all. There is no ‘weight’ behind it. That alone makes auto-pickup for them something which wouldn’t impact players. You still see them… you just don’t have to expedite the effort to make a click for it.
Which also goes into another topic I find a bit baffling actually:
Why are shards itemized in the first place?
There is absolute zero reason to ever have a shard existing in your inventory.
We have a permanently accessible storage for crafting materials, hence they shouldn’t annoy people with taking up space in the inventory grid in the first place. The only thing it does is making you stop, opening your inventory, press a button to immediately stash them.
Displaying them is obviously fine… but has anyone ever taken the time to look through the list of looted shards in the inventory after finding out they’re auto-stashed in your crafting menu? And if so… why?
Sure, you might that that initially, until you realize how the system works. But at best what that does is offering the question afterwards which is ‘Why did I even do that?’
It wastes your time. It feels like the system mocks you for putting emphasis on it. It serves no purpose.
Hence: It’s a badly designed mechanical aspect of the game.
EHG did it this way to ‘make it feel less like a spreadsheet’. Which is one utterly moot point if the loot is displayed.
Gear for example has no unlimited always available space in comparison, the limiting factor being your inventory size. This is why picking it up necessitates the player’s personal input. Also not automatically picking up especially rare items has a function in itself, it puts attention towards something, making it feel ‘more valuable’ in comparison to others for the brain.
This is a function lost with shards though. Since there’s such a high prevalence of affix shards in general, then if a rare one drops you just mindlessly pick it up together with the others rather then actually taking even in what that shard is. A wasted opportunity.
Or to say it differently: If we had endless inventory space then auto-pickup for every items would be a logical conclusion. Presenting it in a listed way at the end to choose between ‘keeping’ and ‘selling’ simply. But that’s not the case.
It is though for shards, though selling them is nonsesical, hence auto-store is the logical conclusion.
Interesting definitely. But it does still make the aspect of active pickup for them meaningless. For emphasis purposes the displaying is more then enough ‘Yeah, number go up!’ is what my brain is telling me when I see shards. I don’t see the content of what I’m actively picking up currently. I just do it.
Rare shards on the other hand hence fall flat. They actually should be emphasized in comparison… but since they behave in the exact same way my brain ignores their existence outside of a ‘oh nice, better number go up’ and still not taking in the actual content of what I’m grabbing.
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I won’t go out of my way for a common shard or two but when there are a whole bunch, I just pick up the lot rather than look at what they are.
Some affixes, like movement speed, hybrid health, cleansing, penetration, are rare, and those are coloured differently, but mostly I put some of them on my loot filter for shattering if I’m running low.
This “if you don’t address this one extremely minor inconvenience the future of the game is in jeopardy” hyperbole has really got to stop. Nobody is going to listen to you when you talk like first world problems are dire.
Also, there didn’t need to be yet another thread about this. Post in an existing one if you think you have something new to say on the topic (you don’t).
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Considering I don’t even bother running around for gold, I feel the argument falls kinda flat.
Once I have enough to progress, I don’t pick them up anymore unless it’s a large batch or a rare drop. I get mine from Shattering, which I don’t even need to buy Runes from vendor for.
The real question is; When is it worth picking up shards? Because when it’s not, auto-loot isn’t gonna change that.
Great, shouldn’t be a problem addressing it if it’s so minor.
Who said anything about this being dire? It’s just a game bro.
Who’s forcing you to reply to the topic? Tell me, I’ll deal with him 
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In programming, many times minor things that have little impact on the software are a headache to change. Not sure how hard this would be to implement, but it’s moot because it’s by a design choice by the devs. Even if many people (including me) feel it’s pointless, it’s what the devs want. It might change in the future, but I don’t think it’s likely. It’s better to just accept it and move on (or draw your line on this issue and leave, also valid).
This is because people are constantly opening new threads about these issues that have been discussed for years, rather than simply chime in on already open and developed threads. All these arguments have been made for and against several times.
Which do you think will grab the devs attention more, especially now that the forums are flooded with constant new threads?
1- 1 thread that has hundreds of votes and people chiming in
2- Dozens of threads that have a dozen votes each
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They really should implement a “vote down” option so the hundreds of repeated threads can get voted down and closed within a day.
Argh…
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Pretty sure I talked to you before. You were explaining to people why it’s so hard to add more stash tabs. Was another forum.
Maybe in an old thread. But it’s a different issue. Adding more stash tabs isn’t a programming problem, you just need to adjust your limit variable. The problem is just one of performance if too many players have too many tabs. To be honest, I’m amazed they even permit 200.
I love this bit.
Minor for the player doesn’t mean minor for the coders.
High effort needed but low priority → not changed.
Simple as that.
Question answered?
If you screw up in your argumentation the proper way is to take a step back, acknowledge it was hyperbole and move on actually addressing the nonetheless viable point.
There is one in the last days? Haven’t seen it, anything in regards to shard pickup is new to me since release actually. Ah… I think I saw 1 post sometime.
Sometimes the argument is about something different which nonetheless affects the same topic though.
Hence it warrants a new one.
If it’s such a problem then the Forum needs to have functionality available to bundle threads about a often-talked-about topic together into a specific category. If something’s talked about a lot it’s after all commonly (with exceptions obviously) a point of controversy and warrants further attention to it over time depending on how large of an impact it has on the players.
Actually the first.
What should happen is both.
It’s a setup mistake of the system to evaluate issues, not a fault of the users.
I hope that only is the case for online, since offline it’s arbitrary as long as only the active tab is loaded and otherwise saved in a database to be pulled from.
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You consider the future of a game to be a dire issue? We are on a video game forum I guess…
I really do think this is the sort of stuff that kills games. Developers married to their ideas hell bent on defending stuff players don’t like. Seen it many times.
Edit:
The following is something a developer posted:
It actually IS the user’s fault… If you take a quick look, all said repeated threads are brought up mainly by new players who just started playing the game and did not care to do a quick search before opening yet a new thread about some issue that has been openly discussed since early access by Devs and the community.
This one, for example… OP created his account TWO days ago, and opens a new thread about auto-loot shards, which has been discussed for at least 4 years now.
C’mon, you don’t need to devil advocate on this… It’s simply good practice in forums to do a quick search before starting a new thread, since ever. 
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